This Dye Changes Your Hair Color According to Temperature and Mood

It’s a universal rule that an office is always extremely hot or extremely cold — and that there’s always one person from finance who declares the temperature to be “just fine.” Here’s one impractical (but definitive) way to end the perennial debate: the Unseen’s color-changing hair dye. The semi-permanent hair color that just debuted at London Fashion Week changes color as it reacts to air and body temperature. One dye lightens hair from black to red as temperatures rise, for example, while another transforms hair from platinum blonde to blue when temperatures fall below 60 degrees.

The color-changing gimmick was inspired by the witchy hair transformations seen in The Craft, wrote Lauren Bowker, the Unseen’s founder, scientist, and real-life witch, in a post on Instagram. Bowker has a penchant for incorporating visual transformations in her work. In the past she’s constructed a jacket that changes color in response to pollution levels, and a Swarovski headpiece that transforms color according to brain activity.

Bowker manipulated dye formula to make the color-changing effect pretty easy. She altered molecular bonds so that when they are introduced to a certain temperature, a chemical reaction takes place, inducing the different hair color, Bowker explains.

Right now you can’t buy the seven different color-changing dyes, but if a partnership with a beauty brand works out as planned, soon enough you’ll be able to artfully say, “Hey, it’s FREEZING in this building” with one gnarly hairdo.